In Our Fall 2023 Issue

Dear Reader,

This isn’t the first time you’ve seen oysters on our cover. Curious myself, I looked back through our many other covers (66 to be exact!) from the past 16 years that we’ve been publishing Edible Rhody and counted three others featuring my favorite bivalves. Given my love for oysters, I’d say I’ve been rather restrained. I know many of you share my enthusiasm—not for just oysters, but for shellfish in its many other tempting forms. I think we can agree, access to fresh shellfish is one of the great pleasures of living in the Ocean State.

The bountiful platter on the cover comes from Chef Ben Sukle’s new raw bar, Gift Horse, in downtown Providence where the menu features a selection of oysters from across Rhode Island’s varied shoreline. He’s highlighting oyster farms from the open waters of lower Narragansett Bay to the Sakonnet River plus the more-protected salt ponds of South County. The littlenecks are also locally harvested from Rhode Island waters and, allowing for some out-of-town guests, the plump mussels come from Maine. You’ll learn more about the menu and Sukle’s local-seafood-centric vision in the conversation about his newest venture with partner Bethany Caliaro here.

The shellfish celebration continues here with chef and local seafood enthusiast Mark Bryson of Duck Press in Wakefield. In this case, we’re talking about Jonah crab, which was once considered a bycatch to toss back to the sea and is now getting well-deserved attention for its succulent, sweet meat and local abundance. Bryson shares a recipe that will inspire rounds of applause from anyone lucky enough to get a seat at your table.

Moving away from the saltwater harvests of Rhody’s east and south, we head west to the countryside of Glocester to meet hop farmers and craft beer devotees Bob and Lynn Butler. Row after row of hops climb scores of trellises from springtime to fall’s much-anticipated harvest. From there, the hops go on to become beer in several popular craft breweries. Most hops are grown thousands of miles from Rhode Island, so beer made from hops grown right here in Li’l Rhody makes for a very special brew, accompanied by a unique farming story.

Learning how food is grown or raised is central to the story here featuring the Rhode Island Farm to School network. In Smithfield, teachers are using school gardens and locally grown food on the school menus as a launching pad to educate students on the value of farming, the importance of food literacy, healthy eating and to teach science through plant life cycles. It’s exciting to learn how students there and elsewhere in Rhode Island are responding to these efforts as teachers note their willingness to try new and sometimes unfamiliar foods—even kale smoothies!

Sampling foods can be a wonderful way to explore a place that’s new to you—and it can also be a wonderful way to learn new things about a place you know very well. That’s what is at the heart of the story here, which offers a roundup of food tours here in Rhode Island and the South Coast. Each tour, from several different tour operators, provides a unique blend of culture, history and food. Walking, talking, sampling and learning—taking a food tour is a delicious way to spend time this fall deepening your understanding of this special place we call home.

Dig in!

Genie McPherson Trevor